Claim: A Facebook user claims Pope Francis cancelled the Bible and proposed a new book.
Our findings show the pope did not cancel the Bible.
Full Text
A Facebook post by Nathan Kuma claims Pope Francis, as part of his reform, has cancelled the Bible and proposed creating a new book.
According to Mr Kuma, this is because the pope believes the Bible is outdated and in need of change.
“Pope Francis cancels the Bible and proposes to create a new book. According to him the Bible is totally outdated and in need of radical change, and for that reason is officially cancelled. The book that will replace it, as well as the content will be announced by the Church,” part of the post reads.
“We cannot keep trying to talk to our audience in a completely new world with an old book of several thousand years. We are losing disciples and we have to seek to modernise the church, rewrite the Word of God, even if it is the Old Testament, in which there are certain passages which are better not repeated,” according to a quote by the Pope on Facebook.
Mr Kuma said he agrees with the Pope, noting the Bible has too many discrepancies.
When this user was challenged in the comment section by another user who stated that the claim was not true, Mr Kuma provided the link to a YouTube video to back up his claim.
Verification
We first followed the YouTube link and watched the video. We observed that this four minutes five seconds video posted with the caption “Faith and Reform in the Catholic Church from The Vatican: A wholly Roman Empire”, did not address the topic of the Bible and the need for its change.
The video’s focus was on how Rome remains the heart of catholicism.
A keyword search led to fact-checks by Politifact, snopes, and India today, debunking this claim.
We visited the Holy See Press Office Bulletin website which publishes updates of the activities of the Holy See (the government of the Roman Catholic Church) but found no information on the Bible being cancelled or replaced by a new book.
We also did not find news reports by credible news platforms on this claim which would have made headlines if the pope actually said so.
Conclusion
This claim is false as we did not find any report regarding cancellation of the Bible.
